I just got back from watching SAW at the cinema. Hollywood : give up. Indie film makers are wiping the floor with you. SAW is without a doubt one of the most creative, unnerving films out there this year. I discovered it was filmed in 18 days for just under $10M, and the lead actor is the writer, and his best mate was the director.
SAW makes Seven look tame, and unlike The Sixth Sense, where everyone guessed the "twist" about 20 minutes into the movie, the ending to SAW really makes the skin crawl up the back of your neck.

Wow - talk about bad planet alignment. With increasing hostility and suspicion surrounding the US elections and Yasser Arafat being in hospital about to die with some mystery ailment, Bin Laden has appeared on video for the first time today passing new threats to America. "Your security does not depend on Kerry, or Bush, or Al Qaeda, but on your policies. There reasons to attack you are still there."

According to Fox News, and we know he much they tell the trush, a U.S. Army officer came forward today to say a team from his 3rd Infantry Division took about 250 tons of munitions and other material from the Al-Qaqaa arms-storage facility soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April 2003. Explosives were part of the load taken by the team, but Major Austin Pearson was unable to say what percentage they accounted for. The material was then destroyed, he said.
In other news, Fox News publishes an obviously blatant attempt to cover up another US military blunder, just days before the election.

Worryingly, it looks like Bush's goons are scouring the blogs for anti-Bush sentiment. Well there must be a load of it, but sending the SS out to someone's house to interrogate them is going too far. I know about the politics of fear and keeping the public opressed and scared, but this is outrageous : See this livejournal entry for details.Well it's obvious that I'm anti-Bush, so in case the CIA, FBI or SS are reading this : I don't want him dead. I'd just like to see him in a position where he has no power. Heck I can't even vote - I'm a resident alien, here legally by the way - I didn't come across the border in a lettuce truck, and I do pay taxes. I also believe very highly in freedom of speech, and being brought up in the Netherlands, I was brought up to speak my mind.
I suspect Tuesday will not be the end of the election, rather the start of the post-election fiasco. I just hope at the end of it that Bush is out and Kerry is in. 50% of the population and most of the rest of the world support my view too. The world will not be safer until Bush is no longer president. He's garnered anti-American sentiment from all over the place, made more people hate this country, and custom-created an anti-american terrorist breeding ground in Iraq.
Great comment on Fark today :
You Republicans are unbelievable. "So he's an arrogant, ignorant, finger flipping, lying, cheating, economy wrecking, job exporting, false pretense invading prick. So what?"
What is wrong with you people? You're not going to have better American presidential candidates until you have better Americans.

Remember the 350 tonnes of explosive that went missing on Bush's watch, that the Pentagon claim wasn't there when they got there?
Well the barrels inside the Al-Qaqaa facility appear on videotape shot by ABC television affiliate KSTP of St. Paul, Minn., which had a crew embedded with the 101st Airborne Division when it passed through Al-Qaqaa on April 18, 2003 — nine days after Baghdad fell.
Better yet, those barrels of HMX were found inside sealed bunkers. The US soldiers are seen on the videotape cutting through the seals!
Albright : "The seal's critical. The fact that there's a photo of an IAEA seal means that what's behind those doors is HMX. They only sealed bunkers that had HMX in them."
The final "I can't believe it!" moment is that after the bunkers were opened, the 101st was not ordered to secure the facility.

It's not bad enough that El Busho lies to the nation every time he opens his mouth, now he's got his wife at it too. Laura Bush at New Hampshire Rally "My Husband Said He'd Reduce Taxes, and He Did".

Lie.

I'm married - my taxes went up. Twice. I saw no tax cut, no cheque from the government and no increase in my tax refund. Why could that possibly be, Mr Bush? Could it be because I don't earn over $200,000 a year and they're the only people you care about?
Goddamn hyppocrite.

Round 1, obviously, goes to Florida, who have already lost thousands of absentee ballots. Round 2 goes to Boone County, Indiana, where 43,000 residents have managed to cast 140,000 votes thanks to Diebold.
Yes, this is obviously going to be a nice, messy election, and Bush might become famous for being the only person in history to twice be assigned president rather than voted.

If I examine the spam I've received in recent months, I now own 232 Rolex replicas, 29 Luis Vuitton handbags, $45.6bn in Nigerian cash and have a 2.4mile long penis. I also have 339 mortgages totalling some $90,513,000, 17,600 years supply of Viagra, a stash of porn tall enough to reach the moon, and 39 hours of video of "Busty young amateurs". On top of that I'm lucky enough to own part of 122 timeshares, have been on a staggering 37,008 blind dates, and have a humidor stuffed to the rafters with over 45,000 Cuban cigars.
My I'm a lucky man.

I found a story online today about a couple in England who are about to lose their house for the sake of a £6,000 loan.
How?
Well they took out a loan for £5,750, at an APR of 34.9% over 15 years. Ok, a lot of people might do that, but not when they're already £2500 in arrears on their mortgage.
Tony and Michelle Meadows took out the loan in 1989 to make improvements to their semi-detached house. They started having trouble paying the load almost immediately, and eventually missed a year in payments. With legal charges, interest, penalties and late payment fees, that loan is now at £384,000. They've already paid £25,000 over 15 years...
Let's analyse this a little. First off - 34.9% ??? The loan company saw them coming. And then over 15 years ? A little calculation shows the monthly payment would have been £168.19, which means that in the best case scenario, they would have paid £30,275 for their £5750 loan - ie. the loan cost £24,525. Thats bonkers! Who would sign up for that loan? Especially with debt and arrears on a mortgage already? Well, obviously Tony Meadows would.
I find little sympathy for this couple. They've dug their own hole and now they're falling in. Their house apparently is only worth £200,000 which means that even if they sold the house and lived in a tent, they'd still owe £184,000 .....

Under the category of "things that have happened under Bush's watch" or "another gross failure of the commander-in-chief", we can now add the following:
The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed a report that 350 metric tons of explosives are missing from a key former military installation in Iraq. The Al Qaqaa military storage facility was supposed to be under U.S. military control, but it has been extensively looted.
But the world is a safer place.

I guess we beat last year's "early snow" date by a few days. Last year, we had snow on the ground October 28th. This year it's today - October 25th. I'm amazed that it's come down into the valleys this early. The big problem is going to be trees - a lot of trees haven't shed their leaves yet so if this sticks, there'll be branches down all over the place and blocked drains. And snowy trees can only mean one thing in Utah - power cuts!

The Pentagon knows exactly where Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, it just can't get to him, John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission, said Thursday. That's convenient. So close to the elections too - nobody could have possibly forecast this.
Apparently though, "There is an American presence in the area, but we can't just send in troops. If we did, we could have another Vietnam, and the United States cannot afford that right now."
Funny.
That didn't stop El Busho in Iraq.

Joan Collins spoke last night of her “humiliation” after Heathrow airport security staff ordered her to strip off items of clothing in front of other passengers. Apparently she flew into a rage and got all pissy with the security staff, asking them "Don't you know who I am" and complaining that she'd been singled out because of her celebrity.
So what clothing did she have to remove that caused this embarassment? Her hat, sunglasses, jacket and shoes. clearly the woman missed some of her pills that morning - Joan darling, we ALL have to take off hats, coats, shoes and sunglasses. You're not a celebrity, you're a has-been. You weren't singled out - everyone in your line had to do it. Daft cow.